John C. Nelson, M.D., MPH, is a board certified obstetrician and gynecologist from Salt Lake City, Utah. A graduate of Utah State University and the University of Utah, Dr. Nelson has been in active clinical practice since 1975. He has served as deputy director of the Utah Department of Health and was president of the Salt Lake County Medical Society, the Utah Medical Association, and served as the 159th president of the American Medical Association. He is a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as well as the American College of Preventive Medicine and is currently serving as medical director for HealthInsight, the Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for Utah and Nevada. He has served on numerous federal committees, most recently the Medicaid Advisory Commission. He has long been concerned with access to health care coverage for all Americans, the elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in health care, prevention of disease, and quality improvement in health care delivery.

Barbara L. Wolfe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Population Health Sciences, and Public Affairs and Faculty Affiliate at the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also is currently serving as Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs. Dr. Wolfe did her undergraduate work at Cornell University and her doctoral work in economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses broadly on poverty and health issues. Current projects examine the effect of expansions in public health insurance on health care coverage and labor force outcomes; the role of income on health using a natural experiment; whether housing voucher programs lead to higher earnings, higher quality child care, and less reliance on other public assistance programs; the adequacy of resources when individuals retire and during their first decade of retirement; and the increasing selectivity of high quality universities. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine (http://www.iom.edu/) and vice chair of the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine Board on Children, Youth and Families.


Additional information is available at www.nih.gov/about/director/acd/index.htm.

The Office of the Director, the central office at NIH, is responsible for setting policy for NIH, which includes 27 Institutes and Centers. This involves planning, managing, and coordinating the programs and activities of all NIH components. The Office of the Director also includes program offices which are responsible for stimulating specific areas of research throughout NIH. Additional information is available at http://www.nih.gov/icd/od/.


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